How To Do Everything Better

Oh, sure. We're going to tell you the secret, the information 741 tax books and software programs haven't been able to tell you. Still, you could do worse than to take advice from Ron McBride, a tax preparer for 10 years and owner of Triple Check Tax Services in Jacksonville, Florida. McBride also spent two years answering consumers' questions at the IRS, where his sole goal was to "know thy enemy."

The good news: If you keep adequate records, McBride says, "You can satisfy the IRS' audit standards and legally take every business deduction that's allowed."

The bad news: No matter how good your records are, you still may be audited-and "The number-one source of IRS audits are Schedule Cs, sole proprietorships," says McBride.

The good news: Chances are good you should be filing as a Subchapter S Corporation form, not as a sole proprietorship.

The bad news: If you're using a Schedule C form, you're paying 43 percent of your net income to the government.

The good news: If you're using a Subchapter S Corporation form, you are legally forbidden from paying self-employment taxes on your net earnings. "That's an immediate 15.3 percent tax savings," says McBride. "You're taxed not at the corporate rate but the personal tax rate. You pay taxes after you subtract all your itemized deductions, personal expenses, home mortgage interest and that stuff, and then you pay taxes at what we hope is a lower tax rate than the corporate tax rate."

How to Speed Up Your Computer (Without Paying a Cent)

You've been upgrading ever since you sprung for Nintendo in 1985, and you'll be #@!%& if you're going to buy another #@%$ upgrade. Well, relax. Here are three simple steps to upgrading without an upgrade, from Bill Howard, the senior executive editor of PC Magazine:

1. "The first thing you want to do is remove any unnecessary files from your computer," says Howard, who advises storing them on a backup disk if you really think you might need them. "What [your system] can't store in RAM, it has to temporarily store on the hard drive, and if there's not enough hard-drive space, it may have to thrash back and forth."

2. Delete all the temporary files you haven't used within the last week. How do you spot the temporaries? They're anything with a "tmp" suffix. They're also anything in the Windows Temporary Directory.

3. Delete any programs you're no longer using through the uninstall routines.

If you're worried you might accidentally delete something vital, relax. "If you do those three things, you will not screw up," Howard swears. "I'll give my home number and guarantee you won't. Well, I won't go that far."

You want more? Try these three steps from Michael Healey, president of PCBuild Upgrade Centers in Needham, Massachusetts.

1. Reduce your color palette. Most users set their systems with too many colors. Any more than 256 colors is too much for a normal user.

2. Remove unwanted start-up programs. How many little icons launch during boot-up? Task bars, special utilities? Get rid of 'em! Everything you need can be accessed via the desktop or menu, so don't clutter your start-up.

3. "Modify your virus scanning-by default, most antivirus programs scan inbound and outbound files. Change this to inbound only," advises Healey. Even better, if you're computer savvy enough to know how to scan disks or anything you download, you can disable inbound scanning altogether, and your system will be much quicker.

Short of all that, drop-kick your $#@$% computer out the window, and see how fast it goes.

This article was originally published in the February 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: How To Do Everything Better.